


Harriet Potter is a Loser

by trashwriter



Series: Welcome to the Losers' Club [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Age for Hogwarts is 13, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/F, F/M, Female Harry Potter, Harriet Potter is a Loser, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, M/M, Multi, OT7, Pennywise (IT) is His Own Warning, Polyamorous Losers Club (IT), Polyamorous Pack, Polyamory, The Losers Go to Hogwarts, Timeline What Timeline, Women Being Awesome, because of the a/b/o dynamics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-18 16:18:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20642072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashwriter/pseuds/trashwriter
Summary: When the Dursleys move to Derry, Harriet Potter doesn’t expect anything much to change. But that summer, everything changes.





	1. Prologue. May 1991.

Harriet Potter never thought she’d ever, in her entire life, feel sorry for her Aunt and Uncle.

The Dursleys of Number Four Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey, had always been perfectly normal, thank you very much!

When they’d become the Dursleys of Sixty-Thirty Witcham Street, Derry, Maine they’d assumed this would continue to be the case.

Although their house was bigger, their car was nicer, and Vernon Dursley had an more important position in his firm, Grunnings, overseeing all the orders received by the new factory just outside of Derry, life for the Dursleys really hadn’t changed, after all.

And then, just as the April rains had started swelling the banks of the canal to dangerous heights, their young son Dudley had gone missing.

He wasn’t the first kid to go missing, and he certainly wasn't the last either.

Since the Dursleys had moved to Derry in October, thirty-nine people had disappeared. Twenty-six of them were kids that went to Harriet’s new school.

Betty Ripsom, the girl who’d disappeared just before Dudley, had sat in front of Harriet in math class. Jake Peterson, the boy who’d disappeared just before Betty, had once thrown a dodge ball at Harriet’s face and broken her glasses.

They were just a few of the long list that also included a teen mom who'd dropped out to take care of her toddler and a cadre of deadbeat boyfriends, a girl a year above Harriet in the Christian school on Maine Street, and a three year old who'd been taken from his front yard when his mother went in for a moment to transfer a load of laundry from the washer to the dryer. 

There was a police curfew enforced, and missing posters papered every community board in town, but once one of these kids disappeared, they were never seen again.

Harriet had never liked her cousin.

Dudley had been stupid, and mean. He and his gang back in Little Whinging had often made her life miserable.

But since moving to Derry they’d reached something like a truce. An understanding.

Since moving to Derry, it had been Dudley who was being picked on.

Not that Harriet had made any friends or anything, but she was used to being the school freak and eating lunch alone.

For Dudley the other side of bullying had been a brand-new experience. Since he was new, and fat, and different. The local gang – a group of lanky sixteen-year-olds led by Henry Bowers – had been targeting him off and on.

Henry Bowers was a real piece of work but so far he hadn't actually hit any girls the way he wailed on the boys so Harriet had stepped in once or twice. Not that Dudley had thanked her for it.

And then one day Harriet had returned to Sixty-Thirty Witcham Street, and Dudley hadn’t.

And just like that everything was different.

Aunt Petunia had accused Harriet at first. Screamed at her, clawed at her face and arms and sobbed and demanded that Harry bring back her precious boy. Uncle Vernon had had to pull her off.

They’d locked Harriet in the cellar for the first three days of the official police investigation.

The third night Harriet had had a nightmare so intense that she’d clawed at the door and screamed until Uncle Vernon had let her out for fear that the neighbours would hear and investigate.

After that she was expected to act as though everything was normal.

Nothing was normal.

Aunt Petunia didn’t get out of bed anymore. Uncle Vernon lost several stone all at once and started coming home later and later, drunker and drunker.

Dudley’s room remained empty.

It gathered dust and started to smell musty. The sharp musky scent of teenage boy dulling with every passing day.

It made tears prick at the back of Harry’s eyes so one weekend she cleaned the whole house. Did all of Dudley’s laundry and scrubbed every surface until it gleamed and smelled of bleach and lemon instead of fear and abandonment and bitter grief.

That night Harriet found Aunt Petunia clinging to one of Dudley’s favourite sweatshirts and wailing. That night Uncle Vernon left and didn’t come back until dawn the next day.

Once upon a time Harriet Potter had thought that Number Four Privet Drive was the place she most hated in the whole wide world.

These days she wanted to lock herself in the small, safe confines of the spider infested cupboard under the stairs and hide under her ratty quilt until Aunt Petunia rapped on her door and her shrill voice floated through the little grate to call her a lazy, good-for-nothing and demand she get out of bed and start breakfast.

She missed Number Four with its tacky floral print sofa and its overgrown begonias and its pristine kitchen. She missed living with her clean-freak aunt and her fusty uncle and her whiny cousin. She missed being able to walk by a basement door without feeling like she was going to mess her pants.

She even kind of missed being picked on at school in a weird way. At least then people were paying attention to her.

At least then she knew they could see her.

With Dudley gone it was like her relatives had become strangers and Harriet had become a grey little mouse, skittering along the walls of their too large house. Or maybe a mouse wasn’t right. Maybe she was more like a ghost. Maybe she was just going to haunt the shadows of that big empty house where the television was never on and her aunt never stirred and her uncle was never sober.

And wasn’t that a sad prospect.

As soon as summer vacation started, she was going to spend every day lying directly in a sunbeam until some of this cold, dark fear melted away, she promised herself.

She’d learn to sleep with a light on if she had to.

And she’d make some friends if it killed her.

She didn’t want to be alone anymore.

She didn’t want to disappear.


	2. June 21st 1991

It was the last day of school and Harriet hadn’t made a lot of progress on her plan to make a friend.

She’d never had one before and she wasn’t all that sure how to go about it.

She and Dudley had transferred into this school after everyone had already met their seatmates and the people in their clubs and formed little packs that were now impossible to infiltrate.

Harry had a plan though.

Well, sort of.

It was more of an idea.

She and Bill Denbrough sat beside each other in History and they’d done an in-class assignment together once when one of his friends, Eddie Kaspbrak, was out sick for three days in a row.

Harriet had nicked some money from Uncle Vernon’s wallet and carefully filled in the order form for a yearbook two weeks ago and she’d received the glossy photobook that morning in homeroom. There were no pictures with her in it, of course. She wasn’t in a club or on any of the sport teams and she wasn’t popular enough for the yearbook kids to go around photographing her doing things like eating lunch or playing frisbee in the quad.

Still, the yearbook was important, because in the very back there were two blank pages of yellowy paper designated for autographs.

Bill was a nice kid.

He wasn’t popular or anything because of his stutter and the fact that Bowers picked on him, but he had a small group of equally unpopular boys that he hung out with. One of those boys was Richie Tozier.

Richie was one of the mouthiest boys that Harry had ever encountered. He loved sticking his nose in other people’s business and he really, really liked to swear and mouth off about sex stuff.

Harry was about ninety percent positive that if she went up to Bill at the end of class and asked him to sign her yearbook that he wouldn’t say no even if it was awkward. And if Bill said yes in front of Richie Tozier, Richie would have to get in on the action if only because she was a girl and a presented omega. And then Richie would drag Eddie Kaspbrak and Stan Uris into it and hopefully Harriet could find some way to get Bill and Richie to drag her into their orbit too.

She even wouldn’t even talk much, she could let them do all the talking. She was used to being quiet and not asking questions. Hopefully her presence would be unobtrusive enough that she could just trail along after these boys until they forgot that they were used to it just being the four of them and then she would be in their group. She would be their friend. 

That morning she’d dressed up in her nicest school dress, wiped some of the mud off her trainers and carefully tied her wild hair back with a ribbon just for the occasion.

There was a pen she’d borrowed from Mrs. Graham, the English teacher, in her pocket in case Bill didn’t have one. And she’d practiced asking in the bathroom mirror until her cheeks started to hurt from smiling.

She was as prepared as she was going to get.

When the bell rang, she quickly wiped her sweaty palms off on her skirt and seized her brand-new yearbook.

She squirmed her way through the shuffle of fleeing students until she made it to where Bill was gathered with Richie and Eddie around Stan’s desk.

“—so will you come?” Stan was asking.

“What even is a Mitzvah?” asked Eddie.

“It’s a party, kind of,” Stan said. “A celebration, anyway.”

“A super-boring party where Stan has to take a super-Jewy test, stand up in front of everyone and get the tip of his dick sliced off!” Richie snorted.

“But then Stan’ll have nothing left!”

“Guys! Shut up!” Stan hissed, nodding at Harriet.

Harry felt her cheeks heat up as suddenly everyone was paying attention to her. She was sweating again. She hoped that none of the boys were presented alphas who could smell her anxiety. She’d die of embarrassment she was sure.

“H-hey, Harriet,” Bill said, smiling at her. “Did you n-need something?”

All of Bill’s friends were staring at her skeptically.

Harry’s tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. The tips of her ears felt like they were probably on fire. She wished all of a sudden that the floor would open up and swallow her.

“B-bill,” she stammered, ducking her head and wishing she’d left her hair loose to hide her face. “Would you, er, that is—”

She thrust the yearbook out in front of herself like a shield, wincing at her own inarticulateness, and tried to smile the smile that she’d practiced.

It felt kind of wobbly on her face.

Bill flushed a bit too but he took the yearbook into his own hands.

“O-oh, um—”

“Fuck me, that looks fucking painful, I don’t know how either of you get anything done,” said Richie, snagging the book from Bill. “Lemme get it first, new girl. I know Big Bill’s sexy and all but he’s got nothing on me.”

Harriet felt some of the tension drain out of her. Richie Tozier to the rescue. Just like she’d planned. Sort of.

“Hey Eddie, gimme your pen!”

Eddie Kaspbrak handed over a blue Bic with a look of incredible long-sufferance.

“You put it in your trash-mouth, Trashmouth, and you’re buying me a new one.”

“Don’t worry, Eds, the only thing of yours I want in my mouth is your mom.”

“Oh my god, will you shut up! And don’t fucking call me that!”

Richie Tozier signed her yearbook as: Richie ‘Bigger Wang than Big Bill’ Tozier and added his phone number in chicken scratch handwriting that Harry could barely read.

“Eddie next! Since it’s his pen!”

Eddie Kaspbrak looked a little uncomfortable to have a strange girl’s yearbook shoved into his arms and he looked to Harriet.

“I mean, if it’s okay? I could write something…”

Harry smiled shyly and it felt more real on her face.

“Yeah, that’d be lovely.”

“Lovely,” parroted Richie in a terrible imitation of her accent. “Shit, that’s hot. Say something else.”

Stan and Bill both smacked him for that one and Harry couldn’t hold in a little nervous giggle.

“Like what?” she asked.

Richie grinned back, “Ask me—”

“Nope!” Stan said clapping a hand over his mouth. “Beep-beep Richie, seriously.”

“Alright, alright, keep it in your pants, Stan the Man,” Richie snorted, pushing his glasses up his nose a bit.

“Here,” Eddie said, shoving the yearbook at Stan. “You next.”

“Me?” sputtered Stan, frowning at the page.

He took the pen though.

“I didn’t really know what to write,” Eddie confessed, speaking really fast. “I know saying ‘have a great summer’ is a cop out, but I swear I’m not trying to cop out. I really hope you have a great summer! A really great summer! An awesome summer!”

“Thanks Eddie, that’s perfect,” Harry said. “Erm, I hope you have a really great summer too.”

“Thanks,” said Eddie. “I’d let you sign that in my yearbook. But I didn’t buy one cause my mom said it was a waste of money and I’m not in any of the pictures.”

“None of us are in any of the pictures,” added Richie. “It’s cause we give off too much animal magnetism. The yearbook committee said that that one picture of Eddie eating a taco was pornographic.”

“There was never any picture like that!”

“Here Bill,” Stan said.

Harry craned her neck to see what he’d wrote.

‘Wish I’d spent more time with you this year – thanks for throwing your sandwich at Bowers, it was the best part of that week!’

Harry flushed again; she hadn’t thought anyone had seen that.

“Oooh, I just though of another good one, Bill!”

“It’s my t-t-turn Richie,” Bill muttered tapping the pen against the back cover of the book.

“Have fun in the sun and get laid in the shade,” quoted Richie. “It’s a classic and it rhymes.”

“It’s a miracle that your parents let you out in public,” Stan said.

“I’m pretty sure town hall is gonna vote to make it a fineable offense,” added Eddie.

“I’m hurt Spaghetti Man, really I am.”

“Don’t fucking call me that either!”

“What am I allowed to call you?”

“How about my name?”

Richie adopted a snooty upper crust accent, “Oh very well, Master Edward.”

Eddie groaned and dropped his head to his desk.

“I need new friends.”

“Good news, Eddie Spaghetti, you already promised the _lovely _Miss. Harriet an awesome summer, what will you two get up to I wonder.”

“Shut up, Richie!”

Eddie was blushing now. Just as hard or harder than Harry, and Stan had a sly look curling on his face.

“You should take her to my Bar Mitzvah she could be your date.”

“W-what!”

“You sure you want her to be there Staniel? When the rabbi pulls down your pants, she’s going to know you’ve got a micro dick.”

“That’s n-not really going to happen,” Bill cut in, handing Harry back her yearbook, closed so that Harry can’t read what he wrote right away, or possibly so Richie can’t get to it, and Eddie back his pen.

“I mean we could cover her eyes at that part?” suggested Richie. “But it’s gonna be the best part.”

“It’s not going to happen because at the Bar Mitzvah I read from the Torah and then make a speech and no one sees my dick. And also, because if you losers don’t want to come there’s no chance that _Harriet Potter_ wants to.”

“I’d come,” Harry blurts without thinking. “Er, if you wanted me to, Stan. Sorry.”

Harry stared at her shoes and wished that she was alone so that she could bash her head against a hard surface until she forgot this moment ever happened. 

“That’s really c-c-cool of you Harriet,” said Bill, his hand warm on her shoulder.

Harry looked up. Eddie, Stan, and Richie were all giving her slightly suspicious looks. Like they thought she was messing with them, but Bill was smiling.

“D-do you want to walk home with us? Your house is just a-a-around the corner from mine, right?”

“Er, yes. I mean sure. I mean that would be—”

“Fucking _lovely_,” said Richie, draping his arm around her shoulders and steering her out of the classroom. “But first we will be ceremoniously trashing all of our school notes. We’d set ‘em on fire, if the teachers wouldn’t flip their lids.”

“You would you mean,” said Eddie. “Some of us don’t want to mess up our lungs with smoke inhalation.”

“And some of us are actually cool,” Richie retorted.

Stan snorted.

“Hey, I was including you in that statement Stan the Man but I can take it back if you really want me to,” Richie said.

They passed by Bowers and his gang, leaning up against a block of lockers and even Richie fell quiet for a tense minute while Patrick Hockstetter watched them pass by a slow alarming grin spreading across his face. Richie flinched a little around Harriet’s shoulders as Hockstetter licked his lips.

Still he only waited until they were barely out of earshot to say: “Think they’ll sign my yearbook? ‘Dear Richie, sorry for taking a hot steaming dump in your backpack last March, have a great summer!’”

“They didn’t really?” blurted Harry.

“Not literally,” Eddie said.

“Yeah, yeah it was all very figurative, still sucked major ass though,” Richie said with a shrug.

“B-b-bowers and his crew have been after us f-for ages,” Bill explained.

“Why?”

“Why not?” said Stan, with a bitter twist to his mouth.

“There just jealous cause we know words with more than three syllables and can use them in a sentence, but they’re bigger and meaner so—”

Richie shrugged as though he didn’t have a care in the world.

“So, since no one want to talk about fucking Bowers, are you guys ready for the book dump?”

“So, ready,” Stan said.

“What about you, Lovely?” asked Richie. “You got everything or should we swing by your locker?”

“No I, er, I have all my books,” Harry said blushing again.

“Okay,” interjected Eddie, “How come she gets an actual nice nickname and the friend you’ve had since first grade you call Spaghetti man?”

“The last time I called you a cutie you hit me in the face, Eds,” said Richie.

“So, if I hit you in the face, you’ll stop calling me Eds?”

“Nope!”

Richie unwound himself from Harry’s shoulders to take the stairs two at a time and all but skipped over to the bins outside the west entrance of the school. Dodging around the sign that announced that the police enforced curfew began at 7pm.

Stan followed just as eagerly and Harriet trailed after the boys who unzipped all their backpacks as far as they would go.

Harriet didn’t have a backpack. She had a reusable market bag that went over one shoulder. But she shrugged it off her arm anyway.

She only had the one binder and the one notebook filled with cramped tiny writing that she’d taken from Dudley’s room while he wasn’t paying attention and the pen that she’d borrowed from Mrs. Graham after her own had run out of ink.

The boys all had proper backpacks filled with notebooks and binders for each subject. Richie’s backpack was also crammed with crumpled problem sets, detention slips and crisp packets right at the bottom.

“Ready?” asked Stan.

“3…2…1…”

There was a series of thumps as the boys and Harry turned their bags over the bins and let all their schoolwork from the past few months disappear into their dark, smelly maws.

“Best feeling ever,” sighed Stan in obvious satisfaction.

“Oh yeah? Try tickling your pickle for the first time,” countered Richie.

“Hey, what do you guys wanna do tomorrow?”

“Start my training,” said Richie immediately.

“Wait, what training?” demanded Eddie.

“Street Fighter.”

“Is that how you wanna spend your summer? Inside of an arcade?”

“Beats spending it inside of your mother,” Richie countered. “Oh!”

He held his hand up for a high five but Stan yanked his arm down without otherwise acknowledging him.

“It’s our first day of freedom, we should do something cool,” said Eddie.

“What if we go to the quarry?” suggested Stan. “You could come too, Harriet.”

“Guys, we have the B-b-barrens,” said Bill.

“Right,” agreed Stan with a nod. “Of course.”

“Look,” said Eddie, softly. “Betty Ripsom’s mom.”

“Is she really expecting to see her come out of that school?” Stan said, shaking his head.

“As if Betty Ripsom’s been hiding in Home Ec. For the last few weeks,” said Eddie.

“You think they’ll actually find her?”

“Sure,” said Richie. “In a ditch. All decomposed covered in worms and maggots. Smelling like Eddie’s mom’s underwear.”

“Shut up! That’s freaking disgusting,” said Eddie, wrinkling his nose.

“She’s not dead. Sh-sh-she’s m-m-missing,” Bill insisted.

“Sorry Bill. She’s missing.” Richie said, uncharacteristically serious. 

“They still haven’t found any of the others who are missing,” said Harriet in a small voice.

“They’re j-j-just not looking in the right p-places,” said Bill.

“Yeah,” agreed Richie. “And hey, the Barrens aren’t that bad, you know? Who doesn’t love splashing around in shitty water?”

“Whoa hey!”

Harry turned around and there was Bowers’ gang. Victor Criss had yanked Richie back by the handle of his backpack and tossed him into Stanley, who tumbled into the grass at Hockstetter’s feet.

“Nice frisbee, flamer,” said Hockstetter, yanking the little cap thing that Stan wore out of his curly hair.

“Give it back!” Stan tried to demand.

Hockstetter just laughed, “Yeah right,” he said, dodging Stan’s reaching hands and tossing it like a frisbee into the window of the passing school bus. “Fucking loser!”

Hudgins came up from Eddie’s other side and belched long and loud into Eddie’s ear. Eddie gagged and ducked a shove. Dodging around Bill to avoid Bowers, who knocked into Bill’s shoulder carelessly.

“You s-s-s-s-suck, Bowers!” snapped Bill.

“Shut up, Bill!” Eddie hissed.

Bowers turned around slowly and the boys all froze around Harriet like deer caught in the headlights.

“You s-s-say something, B-b-b-billy,” mocked Bowers, getting all up in Bill’s face. “You got a free ride this year, ‘cause of your little brother. Ride’s over Denbrough.”

Harriet put her sleeve up over her nose as the schoolyard suddenly stunk like aggressive alphas. Bowers putting off enough bitter stink to rival a skunk and drowning out Bill’s spicy pine-and-cedar scent.

Eddie ducked his head and Harriet bit the inside of her lip to keep from doing the same.

Bowers paused though. Hesitated.

There were two police cars right behind them, not even Henry Bowers was stupid enough to really go after them where authority figures could see.

“This summer’s going to be a hurt train,” he said finally, licking his palm. “For you and your faggot friends.”

He rubbed his putrid stench all over the side of Bill’s cheek and jaw, and Bill screwed up his face but didn’t duck away and give ground and Bowers and his crew turned and crossed the street to Hudgins’ car.

“I wish he’d go missing,” said Richie, moving forward so that everyone stood together with Bill.

“He’s probably the one doing it, psycho,” spat Eddie. “You okay Bill?”

“Y-yeah,” said Bill, rubbing at his scent glands. “Just s-s-s-smell like sh-sh-shit.”

“Here,” said Harry, rubbing at the hinge of her jaw with her wrists until they were shiny with oil from her own glands. “I can—”

Bill blushed right up to the tips of his ears but he nodded and said: “P-p-p-please.”

Harriet blushed right back but she knew how humiliating it was to have someone give you a scent mark without your permission so she didn’t hesitate to reach up and cup his face in both her small, pale hands and stroke the pads of her thumbs over the hinge of his jaw.

Bill bit his lip until it was full and red, and slowly the summer air filled with the scent of Bill and Harriet, evergreens and a little bit sweetgrass.

“Holy shit,” said Eddie.

Bill and Harriet jerked apart.

“Well,” said Richie, philosophically, “That was also hot as fuck. Guess Big Bill really is gonna be an alpha.”

“Not the time, Richie,” Stan said sharply, but his eyes were round.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Richie, rolling his eyes. “See you losers tomorrow. And that means you too, Lovely.”

And then he hooked his chin over her shoulder to nose briefly at her jaw and ran a hand along Bill’s neck quickly, picking up their scent marks and headed over to bike rack.

“Shit!” said Stan, “Sorry about him, I’ll smack him for you guys. Trashmouth! Get back here!”

That left Eddie who was blushing up to the roots of his hair, “Uh, I’m gonna—wait up, guys!”

And that left Harriet alone with Bill.

“S-s-sorry,” he said quietly.

“It’s alright,” Harry said. “I know it’s not…”

She trailed off unsure how to explain that she didn’t really mind, but she really hadn’t meant for the gesture to be quite so…adult.

“Do you s-s-still want to walk home together?”

“Yeah,” Harriet said. “That’d be brilliant.”

Bill grinned, “You should say that in front of R-r-richie. He’d l-love it.”

“Brilliant, you mean?” Harry said, tilting her head.

“Y-yeah,” said Bill, bending to unlock his bike from the racks. “He thinks your accent is the b-best thing ever.”

Harry grinned a bit and ducked her head as they started walking.

“Maybe I will then,” she said.

“Maybe tomorrow?” suggested Bill.

“Would that be okay?” asked Harry. “It sounds like you lot already have your plans sorted.”

Bill’s smile dropped off his face and the corners of his mouth turned down.

“Y-yeah,” he said. “My little b-brother, G-g-georgie, he’s m-missing like Betty Ripsom and the others.”

Harriet nodded.

“My cousin, Dudley, he disappeared as well, after Betty, and Jake Peterson,” she said.

Bill looked at her sharply, and then hesitantly squeezed her nearest shoulder.

“I’m s-sorry.”

“I hated the wanker, but I never wanted him to disappear,” Harriet confessed after a long moment. “He’s some of the only family I have left.”

“I t-think that i-if there’s anything to find, we’ll f-find it in the Barrens,” Bill said. “All the storm drains in t-t-town empty into the Barrens. If there’s clues, th-that’s where we’ll find them.”

Harriet nodded.

“Okay,” she said.

She didn’t really believe that they’d find any of the missing kids alive. Unless maybe they were being taken and held somewhere by some enterprising pervert. Given how young some of the kids were, Georgie Denbrough among them, she would almost prefer if they were just being killed.

“Y-you’ll come?”

“Yes, I’ll be there,” she agreed.

“I’ll come and pick you up,” Bill said. “At t-ten. It’s a b-b-big place.”

Harriet smiled a bit.

“Thanks Bill,” she said. “You’re a real gentleman in the making.”

Bill laughed a bit.

“I j-just try to be the opposite of Richie,” he explained.

“Richie’s charming in his own strange way,” Harriet said. “No one else has ever called me ‘lovely’ certainly.”

“You are though,” Bill said. “L-l-lovely, I mean.”

He was blushing again, and chewing on his lower lip.

“Your scent i-is really nice, and your h-hair—”

“Now I know you’re a liar Bill Denbrough, my hair is a rat’s nest on the best day.”

Bill shook his head, “N-n-no, I l-like it. The c-curls are…”

He trailed off brushing one of the stray curls in question behind her ear.

“I l-like them.”

Harriet smiled shyly. She was probably blushing again but she almost didn’t care. Bill Denbrough liked her hair. Bill Denbrough’s evergreen scent was on her wrists and palms. Bill Denbrough’s friends thought she was ‘lovely’. Bill Denbrough thought she was ‘lovely’.

It was a good day.

“Well, this is me,” she said, gesturing over to Sixty-Thirty Witcham Street. “I should probably…”

“R-right,” said Bill, jerking his hand away from her face. “I’ll s-see you tomorrow Harriet.”

“See you tomorrow, Bill.”

Harry practically skipped up the steps to her Aunt and Uncle’s house.

Her plan had worked better than perfectly. Not only did she manage to ask Bill Denbrough to sign her yearbook, but she also had plans to leave the Dursley house tomorrow and hang out with him and his friends.

Which reminded her—she reached into her book bag to salvage the only survivor of her impromptu post-semester book dump. The glossy Derry High School yearbook with it’s scribbled on autograph page.

There, just a little under Richie’s phone number was Bill’s neat bubbled printing.

‘Let your smile change the world, don’t let the world change your smile – it’s lovely.’ – Bill Denbrough.

Harriet grinned wide and honestly and hugged the book to her chest.

Best day ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love writing Richie Tozier. Love it. 
> 
> This ended up being a little more shippy than I'd planned but let me know what you all think!


	3. Early Morning. June 22nd 1991

_Wake up…_

_Harriet…_

_Harry! _

_Wake up…_

_Wake up!_

_WAKE UP, COUSIN!_

* * *

Harry’s eyes snapped open and she was halfway up and off the sofa before she realized that the house was quiet.

You could’ve heard a pin drop; the leaky faucet wasn’t even dripping.

But no, that wasn’t quite right, Harriet’s harsh too-quick breaths echoed; thunderous in the cavern of her own skull. She closed her eyes, held her breath and strained her ears.

There was nothing.

Not the creak of a stair, or a grunting snore.

The house was quiet. Or maybe silent was the better word to describe the suffocating press of nothing that had fallen over Sixty-Thirty Witcham Street.

There was a quality to that silence though. Like someone was watching her. Like they were hiding in a corner with a hand clapped over their mouth to keep from laughing.

Harry’s skin crawled. The fine hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stood on end. Her lungs strained and her instincts screamed.

There was something in the house.

There was something _watching_ her.

She opened her eyes again and drew in a deep rattling breath, fighting to keep as still and as quiet as possible.

No one was there.

She flared her nostrils and opened her mouth trying to pick up something. Some scent that was out of place but all she could smell was bleach, lemon, the cold damp of the night air wafting through the open window and the faintest whiff of her Aunt’s cloying apple-blossom scent.

And maybe…popcorn?

Something salty and savoury with the faintest tang of bright copper, so subtle that she almost missed it, there one minute and gone the next.

Harriet climbed out of her little nest on the sofa and padded on tiptoe to the front door.

It was already locked, but she turned the latch a little further anyway. Just to be sure.

She slipped down the hallway next, avoiding the creakiest boards in the floor, and checked the back door.

It was also latched shut. The window-shade pulled down.

Harriet peeked through the small gap where the porch light shone through, but the backyard was just as empty as the house. There was nothing out there but dewy grass.

The window over the kitchen sink was open a spare crack with hardly enough space for a mouse to squeeze through, and the screen was intact.

The grey-velvet quality of the darkness suggested that morning wasn’t too far off.

The blinking green numbers on the microwave clock confirmed her suspicion, showing that it was just gone four in the morning.

She wandered out of the kitchen and crept back into the hallway with the vague idea that she’d check upstairs…and possibly gather her pillow and blanket and sleep in the guest bath, perhaps for the rest of the week, when she saw it out of the corner of her eye.

There.

A dark, silky, slithering something. Subtle as a beckoning finger.

Like most things glimpsed in the periphery it was more terrifying than anything seen face to face could ever be.

Her heart jammed itself up behind her teeth in an instant. She spun wildly with her hands half-raised to face…nothing.

Nothing but her own reflection.

It stared at her. Green eyes impossibly huge and deep-set into her pale face as they both drew in lungfuls of air that were suddenly as thick and sticky as English toffee.

“Shit,” she gasped out in a bare whisper, dropping her gaze for a moment to brace her hands on her knobby knees.

She was jumping at shadows, she thought, rueful for a half-second as it occurred to her that she’d just seen flutter of her hair in the mirror, and nearly jumped clean out of her skin.

She straightened up and pulled a face at her own reflection.

“Very brave, Harriet,” she mocked.

The tight smile in the mirror was dripping with condescension, a little too literally, Harriet thought swiping at the faint sheen of drool in the corner of her lip with her pajama sleeve and turning away from the mirror.

Harriet was reluctant to close her eyes again, but her eyes were telling her that there was nothing there. Her dynamic could be a real pain sometimes but it had gifted her a sense of smell that a bloodhound would envy. Even if her eyes were fooled her nose wouldn’t be so easily deceived, and there was a scent that didn’t belong.

She concentrated on parsing through the scents around her until she could unpick the thread of carnival corn and copper pennies from the rest.

Once she had it, she opened her eyes and turned toward the source. Tiptoeing forward, slow and careful.

The cellar.

The scent was curling up from under the cellar door.

As if sensing her gaze, the cellar door clicked open and swung wide on squealing hinges.

Harriet shivered as a sudden chill crept down her spine. A wet, frigid trickle of undiluted fear, like an ice cube slipped down the back of her shirt.

Carefully she reached out and pushed the door shut. Leaning her weight against the wood paneling until the swollen door aligned with the frame and the latch caught.

There was a poorly muffled giggle, spilling out from behind that door.

High and delighted, like a child’s laugh.

Harriet carried one of the stiff-backed kitchen chairs over to the door and wedged it up underneath the knob so that it wouldn’t turn.

She checked it three times, gently twisting the knob without rattling it.

Then, satisfied that if the door swung open, it would at least be on purpose, she went back to the couch to gather up her ratty blanket and under-stuffed pillow.

She’d stay the rest of the night in the guest bathroom; with the light on and the door securely locked she might even manage a wink or two of sleep before dawn.

She had her foot on the bottom step and was ready to trudge upstairs when the front door clicked unlocked and her uncle stumbled in, cursing under his breath and toeing out of his loafers with a groan.

He reached behind him to re-secure the latch automatically.

Harriet froze, hoping that he wouldn’t notice her, stupid, considering she was right in the middle of his path.

But Uncle Vernon was quite drunk.

Three or four sheets to the wind. And drunk as a skunk, as the Americans would put it.

There was the rich burn of brandy on his breath and the acrid tang of stale cigarette smoke wafting from his crumpled jacket suggesting that he’d been at the bar in the next town over until last call, and then had slept in his car until his head stopped spinning long enough for him to drive home. It was his typical modus operandi these days.

Harriet took her foot off the bottom step and tried to slink away before her could think to notice her, but his watery blue eyes flicked up and froze her in place before she could get very far.

“What the bleeding blue blazes are you doing, girl?” he demanded, seizing her upper arms. “Squatting on our living room furniture again like you don’t have a perfectly good bed.”

Harry’s bed, new mattress though it sported, was tucked in the alcove under the cellar stairs in much the same way her bed at Privet Drive had been wedged into the cupboard.

Uncle Vernon was always more conscientious of the line between her and the Dursley family, Aunt Petunia didn’t care if she was around as long as she was neither seen, nor heard, but Uncle Vernon needed a clear, clean line. Needed to remind himself and Harriet that she was something lesser.

And that line lived in the threshold between Harriet’s make-shift bedrooms and the rest of the house.

Uncle Vernon dragged her to the cellar door, where the scent of popcorn had intensified and the giggles were barely muffled.

He tore the chair out from under the doorknob leaving scratches on the hardwood floors that would have sent Aunt Petunia into a towering fury under normal circumstances.

“Don’t!” Harry said as loudly as she dared. “Don’t, please, Uncle Vernon, there’s something down there! You’ll let it out!”

“Don’t be stupid, girl,” he growled, yanking the door open.

Rationally Harry knew that the distance from the hall down to the cellar was only seven steps but in the moment the space behind the threshold seemed to lengthen and dilate, deep and dark and fathomless.

She hadn’t slept there since Dudley disappeared.

Apparently for good reason.

Down in the deep, shifting dark of that pit, two yellow eyes gleamed. They were set into a chalky white face, covered in flaking white paint except for two lines that dripped down from under those terrible eyes and trailed along its cheeks to meet where its mouth was a wet swollen red, stretched wide and showing off long yellowing teeth.

Superficially, the monster in her cellar looked like a circus clown dressed up all in white and silver with rusty pom-pom buttons and cumbersome clown shoes. Only Harry was sure that no man in a stuffy suit and silly make-up had ever been this horrifying.

The cellar had always given her a bit of the heebie-jeebies, but, like the cupboard under the stairs before it, it was never locked when she really truly needed to get out. In the normal course of things, she would have gone compliantly to the cellar and snuck out later.

In the normal course of things boys didn’t disappear in the middle of the day and when adults admonished that there were no such things as monsters that lived in the cellar, they spoke truthfully.

“See now, freak? There’s nothing down there but dust and damp and that’s less discomfort than you deserve, ungrateful girl.”

He didn’t see it, the clown, Harriet realized. And whatever he saw instead seemed normal enough to Vernon Dursley which meant it was likely very ordinary indeed.

“I-I was just—”

“I don’t want to hear it!”

He shook her a bit and Harriet fell quiet, dropping her eyes to her feet behind the sheltering curtain of her hair and trying to make herself still and small. And then he shook her again. Hard that time. Hard enough to rattle her teeth.

“You, why you?” her Uncle snapped, spittle flying from his mouth.

“I’m sorry,” Harry said in a bare whisper.

“Sorry,” sneered Uncle Vernon, his grip tightening to the point where Harry could feel her bones creak. “You’re sorry. Well, I’m sorry too.”

Harry dared a quick look up but there was nothing in Uncle Vernon’s expression to suggest that he was going to let her go.

“I’m sorry we ever agreed to take you. Not that those freaks gave us much choice, dropping you on our doorstep like they did. We were too soft on you. I should have dropped you off at an institution the second your unnaturalness showed its face,” he said, and then more quietly. “Should have dropped you down a deep well when you were too small to know the damn difference and forgot you ever existed. What makes you so special, huh? You’re just a little nothing. Why are you still here when my Dudley is gone?”

Harriet trembled in his grip, trying to ignore the sting of his words in favour of concentrating on the very physical danger she was now in.

“Please, you’re hurting me, Uncle Vernon—”

“Shut your chirping mouth, freak, before I lose my patience and throw you down these bloody stairs and break your skinny neck!” he bellowed, loud enough to wake Aunt Petunia, maybe, not that that would make any difference. “You're an unnatural, unwelcome, a waste of space. It should have been you, if it had to be anybody—why couldn't it have been you?”

“Please, Uncle Vernon…” she whispered.  
  
There were things that Harriet could have said, or tried to say, anyway. Like that there was something hunting the young people of Derry. That she was pretty sure it was in the house. That she hadn't made the decision to uproot them all and move to this foreign town in the middle of nowhere Maine.

But what good would that do?

None.

Uncle Vernon would get angry—well, angrier—and it was never worth the effort it took to make a new thought stick in his or Aunt Petunia’s stubborn heads.

In the pit the clown giggled again and Harry froze in her Uncle’s grasp.

“Get in there!”

“Get in here, Harry!” it said cheerfully. “You’ll have lots of fun. You’ll float down here, don’t you know? We all float down here!”

As that moment ticked by it became less and less important that she placate her Uncle and more and more important that she run from the thing in their cellar – the thing that her uncle couldn't see, the thing that smelled like a storm drain, and a circus, and old, dried blood and then, all of a sudden, like nothing at all  
  
It was smiling at her. The clown. Waving. And there was something about that grin, about the suggestion in it, that turned Harry's guts to water. Made her heart race like a trapped rabbit’s.

She knew with the sudden startling clarity of a thunderclap, if she’d like to live another day, she absolutely could not go down there.

She needed to get out of there.  
  
Before her brain had finished conjuring the thought and started the process of granting permission for her body to move, she'd started fighting against Uncle Vernon with all her strength.

Squirming, struggling and kicking her feet off the floor and pushing against the doorframe for leverage.

“What the bloody hell is wrong with you, girl!” Uncle Vernon barked.

She wrenched her neck around at an awkward angle to bite his wrist, hard enough that she tasted blood, and Uncle Vernon let her go involuntarily. Dropping her with a pained howl that they could probably hear next door.  
  
She stumbled at the sudden lack of resistance, scrambling briefly on all fours, before turning around and running.  
  
The lock on the front door forced her to pause, and gave her just enough presence of mind to grab her trainers in one hand.

She risked a quick, darting glance over her shoulder, groping for the latch with her free hand.  
  
Behind her Uncle Vernon shouted and clutched at his wrist, lurching forward on unsteady feet and cursing, though Harry couldn’t really make out the words over the ringing in her ears, the ringing that began to sounds less like ringing and more like a distorted cacophony of children’s voices, giggling or maybe singing.

Above his head a shiny red balloon bobbed merrily along the ceiling. Its string trailing free.

Her hands finally found the cool metal plate and in three quick movements she shoved the door open hard and Harriet flat-out sprinted across the lawn.  
  
Harriet has always known that she was a good runner – fast. She used to need to be ready to outrun Dudley's little gang of thugs at a moment's notice after all.

She’d never run like this, though. In that moment her body felt like it was made to run as she all but flew across the Dursley’s lawn, and then the neighbours’, the grass wet and cold on her bare feet.

When she reached the asphalt, it took a layer of skin off the bottom of her heels but the sting didn't register until she’d cleared the block and escaped the laughing voices following her.

* * *

She hadn’t realized that she’d stopped running away from something and started running toward something else until she found herself standing on the porch of what must’ve been the Denbrough house with her hands pressed palms-flat against the front door. She managed to stop herself just short of pounding on the door because that would be utterly ridiculous. Her heart slammed hard against the front of her chest, a little bit from exertion, but mostly from blind panic so intense that she wasn’t entirely sure her ribs weren’t going to crack open from the force, but that wasn’t any reason to wake the household of a boy she’d only spoken to a handful of times before that afternoon.

And really, what was Harriet meant to say? That she was terrified of the evil invisible clown that lived in her cellar? She’d be lucky if the Denbrough parents only called her mad and marched her back into the arms of the incandescently furious Uncle Vernon and persistently catatonic Aunt Petunia. She’d be thrown into the cellar for the rest of Summer vacation and she’d eventually disappear, dragged off by the invisible clown when it finally got tired of tormenting her.

If Bill’s parents decided to bypass her relatives all together and shipped her to an institution…Well, Harriet had grown up hearing horror stories about institutions, all the better for Vernon to threaten her with she’d almost rather be taken by the clown since it at least seemed likely that he’d kill her quickly. Why else would so many kids have disappeared already?

The panic ebbed with the slow creak of logic, and of greater fears, older fears.

She rested her head against the Denbroughs’ front door, closed her eyes, and breathed.

Her feet had carried her here, unerringly, because of the scent mark still relatively fresh and lingering on her wrists, but Bill Denbrough was not her alpha. It wasn’t her place to come here for comfort and protection.

She really couldn’t stand around here pressed close against the door until the sun rose.

All the same, she couldn’t bring herself to actually leave.

Five more deep breaths, she told herself firmly. That would be enough. After five breaths she would strap a bit of steel to her spine open her eyes, get down from this porch and figure out where the bloody hell she was meant to go until dawn.

She drew in as much air as her chest could bear to hold, keeping it still and quiet in her lungs for a ten count, and then another one, until the lack of oxygen started to burn and she was forced to let it go.

“One,” she counted, out-loud so that there could be no cheating.

“Two.”

She was three breaths into her little ritual and feeling a bit better when the door under her hands was suddenly yanked free and she was squeaking in alarm and stumbling right into the arms of Bill Denbrough.

“Harriet?” he squawked, voice cracking in the middle.

“Bill!” Harry squeaked back.

“What happened?” he asked, pulling her close and tucking her under his chin. “Y-you’re upset.” 

Harry winced as the rough movement aggravated some of the bruises Uncle Vernon had left her with, and at the thought of just how bloody awful she smelled at the current moment if it was enough to wake Bill out of a sound sleep and make him look that rattled.

She opened her mouth to answer him only to realize between one moment and the next that she really didn’t know what she could say. 

Bill was somehow, miraculously, standing in front of her dressed in pajamas that showed off an inch or so above his bony ankles with his brown-red hair in utter disarray and his eyes were boring into her, and there was nothing that she could say.

She closed and opened her mouth a few times as explanations, excuses and even the full and honest truth fought to spill from her lips. None of it made it past the sudden lump in her throat.

Funnily, after a moment, Bill just quirked his lips up in a sad approximation of a smile.

“It’s oh-oh-kay,” he told her. “N-never mind. J-just—”

He towed her over the threshold and nudged the door shut with one bare toe.

“Bill,” she hissed, suddenly unsure. “Your parents…”

The sad smile took on a bitter edge.

“They won’t n-n-notice,” he told her. “Even if they did, ever since G-g-g-g-georgie…it’s like they’re walking around in a f-f-fog. If by s-some miracle they d-did notice they really wouldn’t care.”

Harry felt some of the tension ease out of her shoulders. She was well-used to adults not seeing things right in front of their noses and not giving a damn even when they did see. It was the ones who took their responsibilities seriously and watched with assessing eyes that Harriet had to watch out for, those adults were dangerous.

“Okay,” she agreed finally, letting Bill tug her along behind him with a hand looped loosely around the delicate bird-bones of her wrist.

He led her up the stairs and around the corner to a bedroom about the same size as Dudley’s. The walls were painted an understated blue and the sheets on the double bed were about the same colour, but darker. Rumpled and clean-smelling. There was a small mountain of unfolded laundry in a plastic basket and books and comics in stacks of three to five littered every flat surface. Bill’s empty backpack was hanging off his desk chair and Harry spotted a stray sock underneath it.

The whole room smelled like teenage boy, adolescent musk and hormones with a hit of spicy evergreen, less potent but more elemental than the raw scent mark that still lingered on Harry’s wrists and hands.

Bill gave her a moment to take it all in.

“You can sleep here,” he said quietly. “It’s still early and y-you look t-t-tired.”

Harriet very seriously considered willfully misunderstanding what Bill was saying for a half-second, but thought better of it when she caught sight of the way that his hands were fisted in the hem of his shirt.

Instead she stalled for time.

“My feet—”

“St-stay there,” Bill said. “I’ll get a r-r-rag.”

She didn’t have a whole lot of experience dealing with alphas but she knew the basics. Her French teacher back in Little Whinging had scolded her for riling the alphas in her class with her distress. Every alpha in the world has a nose just as good as yours Miss Potter, she’d said, and they are biologically compelled to stick it into your business and solve all your problems.

Harriet stood barefoot and slightly muddy in Bill Denbrough’s bedroom because it was just gone four thirty in the morning and there were great big purpling bruises on her biceps and blood on the corner of her mouth, and she reeked of stress sweat and blind panic but wouldn’t or couldn’t talk about it.

Refusing to climb into his bed because of a little thing like propriety now would prick at Bill’s nascent alpha pride. It would be the same as saying that she didn’t have any faith in him to protect her, that he wasn’t making her feel any better at all, and in fact she hated him and he made everything worse.

All things that were patently untrue both in general and in specificity. She couldn’t remember ever feeling this well-cared for.

Bill came back in with a rag and a bowl of warm wash water.

“S-s-sit for a minute,” he said.

Harriet sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, well-aware that she’d committed to a course of action that, should Aunt Petunia ever find out about it, would earn her a screaming lecture complete with a whole lot of name-calling.

Bill knelt at her feet and clumsily rolled the ragged end of her over-sized tracksuit bottoms to expose her feet and ankles.

His touch was firm but gentle enough that Harry squirmed away from the ticklish sensation of the rag on the arches of her feet a few times.

Once that was done, he dug out a fresh set of pajamas from his clean laundry pile and bustled off to tidy up the bowl and give her some privacy while she changed out of her sweat soaked things. Those went into a drawstring laundry bag where they couldn’t be smelled.

Harry was then shown to a bathroom where she could wash her face and pee and then Bill was sitting cross-legged behind her, brushing the tangles out of her hair with exaggerated care.

Only when the sky began to lighten, and her yawns threatened to crack her jaw, did he chivvy her under the covers and tuck himself in next to her with a careful handspan of distance between them. Then and only then, did he ask her what happened.

“Ever since Dudley, my Uncle drinks too much,” she told him after a long while.

“He h-h-hurt you.”

“Yes,” Harry agreed.

It was an unfair statement for all that it was true.

It left too much unsaid, implied too many other things, and Bill deserved better than a hedged and half-assed excuse…but Harriet couldn’t tell him any of it.

It didn’t matter if he laughed at her and called her crazy or if he took her statements at face value and believed her without hesitation.

Either would be bad.

If he laughed it would be a betrayal.

If he believed her than the nightmare would be real.

It was easier to let Bill draw all the wrong conclusions, reach over the arbitrary divide between them to let their fingers lace together and give her a little supportive squeeze.

It was easier to forget the fear.

So, lying there in Bill’s warm blue sheets, listening to his breathing Harry let the fear blur and fade and become dreamlike and finally, when it was just gone six in the morning, she fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am shocked and thrilled by all the positive response this is getting and can only hope this chapter lives up to expectations about Harry's first encounter with It - it was hard to decide how to play it since Harry's worst fear (canonically speaking) is fear itself - i just hope it's actually somewhat scary and not just a jumble
> 
> anyhow! let me know what you guys think, next chapter should be a bit lighter as we get back into Loser Love

**Author's Note:**

> Basically I need a Losers + Harry + Boggart Scene and then decided that it was unfair that Bev was the only Lady Loser and then decided that I ship poly!Losers and then I needed to rewrite the entire Harry Potter universe...
> 
> Anyway let me know what you guys think, and maybe help me sort our favourite Losers?

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Proud to be a Loser](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20694212) by [AbsentMindedProfesor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AbsentMindedProfesor/pseuds/AbsentMindedProfesor)


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